Scientists in the UK and Germany have viewed individual metal atoms making and breaking bonds. They used carbon nanotubes as a scaffold to hold the atoms in place. This is with individual rhenium atoms. You can see the distance between the atoms grow and shrink depending on the environment. It looks like this type of microscopy will become important in chemistry.
Category Archives: Science
More white rhinos please
The Northern White Rhinos are almost extinct. There are two still alive, and both are females. This does not bode well for future cute baby rhinos. But scientists have saved the sperm of some currently dead male white rhinos, and they’ve managed to create viable embryos using eggs from one of the living rhinos and some of this sperm. They plan to implant it in a surrogate mother (a southern white rhino) soon.
How are they going to plant billions of trees?
Well, they’re not going to do it by hand — too many to plant. But having a machine do it, that could work. But it has to move over rough terrain. DRONES! That’s it, we’ll use drones!
Octopuses are much smarter than you think
While they’re mollusks, there’re not brainless. In fact, most of their brain is spread throughout their 8 arms. They like puzzles, make friends, and remember people. Sadly, they have short lives and can’t pass on their knowledge to their offspring because they die soon after reproducing.
Read this fascinating article: Deep Intellect.
Dead Zones in oceans are increasing
Dead Zones are areas in the oceans that have very little oxygen. They don’t have enough oxygen to support most marine life. We’ve known about them for a long time, but now the number of them are increasing rapidly. This threatens populations of large fish, including tuna.
This is tied in with climate change, because warmer water can’t hold as much oxygen as colder water. Over time, this will have profound effects on many marine populations.
Vaccines are saving lives
Vaccines save 2 million lives per year compared to 1990. 10 million saved in the US since 1960.
Driving rats?!
Yes, rats have been trained to drive.
Not actual cars, but small vehicles in a lab. They can control left, right, and forward. The rats learned to drive to get food. And scientists found that learning to drive seemed to reduce stress.
The ability of rats to drive these cars demonstrates the “neuroplasticity” of their brains, says Lambert. This refers to their ability to respond flexibly to novel challenges. “I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” she says.
And there are neat videos of rats driving their “cars”.
Here’s another article that includes information on the two groups of rats involved, including that they seemed to enjoy just driving their cars even if there were no treats involved, but only if they lived with many other rats in an enriching environment.
Why do zebras have stripes? Perhaps to get rid of flies.
Some scientists painted stripes on cows, and found that it halved the number of biting insects. This could help ranchers save money, and is healthier than spraying pesticides on cattle.
Why is the news always so bad? Because that’s what we pay attention to.
If you’ve noticed that the news system likes to report on things going wrong instead of the nice things that happen, you now have evidence for the reason behind it. Humans pay more attention to bad things than good things. This study is about a world-wide 17 country study on how people react to negative news.
For example, while statistically, we are safer now than in the past, people are more and more afraid of it because the news concentrates on the bad things, not the good things that happen. That just isn’t “news”.
Vantablack is so last year
Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of incoming light.
MIT scientists have accidentally made a material that absorbs 99.995% of incoming light. I wonder if BMW will bother making a car coated in it?